'Yours was the first wedding I've been to since Jeff died...'

Dear Kylie and Anita,

I came to your wedding empty-handed.

We were supposed to bring a personal letter with advice for a long and happy marriage and every time I sat down to write this, the words just wouldn’t come. Writing about love is my thing, but in front of me was a blank page where sage romantic advice was meant to be and I wondered (not very hard) why it was so difficult to articulate this.

Yours was the first wedding I’ve been to since Jeff died, and I went alone, not knowing anyone there except one lovely mutual school friend who I quickly fell upon. It was the best wedding I’ve ever been to (weirdly, I include both of mine, which I loved, in this assessment).

My marriage to Jeff was decades shorter than I wanted it to be, but the years we had were intense. They were breathtaking, at times. They changed me profoundly in lots of good ways ... so much so that the whole thing feels very ‘fairytale’ in retrospect, and probably looks that way to a lot of people.

I need you to know that it wasn’t always. I remember a huge argument we had in our driveway, quite early on. He didn’t know if he could do this whole blended family thing. It was hard. Remarrying a little later in life, Jeff was perhaps more set in his ways than most, and I could be a bit ‘cyclonic’. We were very different people (which was both magical and difficult).

Like Anita, he took on tween step-daughters who were with us about 60% of the time, with every second weekend for just the two of us (bliss). But within months of our wedding, circumstances changed and the girls were with us full-time (a change he instantly embraced, without a single word about not being what he 'signed up for’).

To everyone’s credit, we all adjusted, but there were times when I felt like the mediator — torn in two directions, defensive, apologetic, smoothing things over …

"The more challenging and chaotic things became, the deeper the bond that unfolded between us." Image: iStock

Long and happy marriages aren't a fairytale

As the years went on, it was like watching an entire family rising to some sort of deeply profound occasion. The more challenging and chaotic things became, the deeper the bond that unfolded between us. Jeff could be infuriating. So could I. So could the girls. So could Seb.

There was a moment, about two weeks before he died, when we’d been sleeping in separate beds for what seemed like years (but was on and off, depending on Seb’s weird sleep patterns), when we passed each other in the corridor (literally), stopped, hugged, kissed, and I said, ‘I know this is hard, but in the middle of this storm you and I are okay, aren’t we? We’re still strong?’

‘Of course we are,’ he said, and held me tighter. Of course we were.I don’t think I’d ever loved him more than in that moment, and that’s the moment that preceded my very public display of affection on Facebook about what he meant to me — words uttered DAYS before he died, which have given me nothing but peace in the two years since.

This romantic advice seems unromantic, and that’s exactly the point. Long and happy marriages aren’t about fairy godmothers and golden carriages — as utterly spectacular as both of you looked in your dresses tonight.

Marriage is about loving someone at their weakest. Holding on through the worst. Letting someone see every piece of you — even the bits that fill you with shame — trusting that person to love you regardless…

One day, for me, it was about standing there on your own, two of you in the room … only one heart beating … knowing in that instant that very little matters except love, forgiveness and breathing.

The greatest gift I can give you is to shatter the perception (promulgated by me) that I had the perfect marriage. It was very real. We were both very imperfect. If I could, I’d re-live every single moment of that imperfection.

A picture of the married couple. Image: Supplied

Handing your heart to someone looks like madness from the outside

You said in your speech, Kylie, that Anita took your bruised heart in her hands and held it. That’s the bit where I fell apart, not because that’s what it was like for me with Jeff, but because that’s what I now have. A very bruised heart.

You asked for advice on love, and then your wedding became a Class A Instruction Manual for the rest of us on what love should look like. It was sparkly and divine and messy and real and funny and deep and poignant and sweet. It was Hollywood Perfection Meets Things Go Hilariously Wrong And Isn’t Life Just Grand?

Life is also very short. You know that even more intimately than I do. Love is risky. Handing your heart to someone, when the context around your meeting screams ‘complicated’ in every direction looks like madness from the outside but, if you’re right for each other, somehow it works.

Which brings me to my only piece of advice:

Check your hearts. Not in the usual, medical way that I harp on about (but do that too). Check in with each other's heart, like Jeff and I did in the corridor that night near the end. Really check your hearts, amidst the chaos and drama and exhaustion and worry.

I might have come to your wedding empty-handed, but I left with a renewed belief in love. I left with hope. I left wishing deeply to find again what we had and what you have… and believing in magic all over again.

With all my love for a long and beautiful, messy and infuriating future together. You deserve every bit of happiness.

Em xx

P.S. I also left with an open-ended invitation from your good friends (my new friends) Kylie and Lara (who adopted me throughout, thank you!) to visit them on the Gold Coast, and I possibly gave permission for them to match-make me, which is a suggestion I normally respond to with 'no, not yet, etc' but didn't strenuously object to tonight. Such was the magic of your day. Which is probably a miracle. xxx

kidspot can be viewed on multiple devices

a note about relevant advertising

We collect information about the content (including ads) you use across this site and use it to make both advertising and content more
relevant to you on our network and other sites. This is also known as Online Behavioural Advertising. You can find out more about our
policy and your choices, including how to opt-out here